SAMUEL SOKOL:What is the mood in Turkey regarding Israel right now? Do you believe that the boat incident will cause a breakdown in the Ankara-Jerusalem relationship? What is your advice for the government of Turkey? for Israel? What is your view on the intentions of the activists and what is your view on the Israeli blockade of Gaza? What can be done to repair the recent rifts in the relationship between Turkey and Israel, once so close?

MR. ADNAN OKTAR: In a statement before this event I said that Israel should be allowed to search the boats and that Israel had a natural right to do that. What should have been done was to inform Israel of the cargo, permit them to examine the boats if they wished and then to distribute the humanitarian aid being carried to the people in need in Gaza together.

The only way of preventing incidents of this kind is for sincere believers on both sides, devout Jews and devout Muslims, to form an alliance. If devout Christians, devout Jews and devout Muslims protect and watch out for one another and support one another, incidents of this kind will never happen. To help the needy and protect the poor is commanded not only in the Qur’an, but also in the Torah. Devout Jews would never oppose the helping of the needy and innocent in Gaza. For example, if we had taken that aid from here and if devout Jews had met us, no such thing would have happened. If we said we would carry the aid in, they would have said, “May Allah be pleased, you have done a good thing. Let us distribute it together.” We would have happily handed out gifts to everyone, with Palestinian and Israeli children sitting together on our laps. We would then have eaten together and talked and praised and prayed to the One Allah. There would have been no climate of destruction and distrust based on oppression, resistance and violence. In an environment where you have sincere believers, you have love, respect, compassion and mutual trust. That is because both sides will know that both genuinely fear Allah and abide by the bounds set by Him, in the most virtuous manner.

Sincere and devout Jews and Muslims can bring about an end to the bloodshed in the Middle East. These are brother societies, one the sons of Ishmael and the other the sons of Jacob. There is no reason for them to be against one another. Let Muslims be free and let Jews be free. It is not only Muslims who are trapped behind the walls, but Jews have been imprisoned behind them, too. They must be free to live as they like, and not just in Israel, let them come and live freely and build factories and open universities and do business in Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Let them be free to worship as they wish. Let us tear those walls down and live together as brothers in love and friendship.

The system of the dajjal [antichrist/antimashiach] wants bloodshed and believers to be fragmented and divided. What we must do is for all Jews, Christians and Muslims who love Allah and the Prophets to form an alliance against the system of the antichrist, in other words against irreligion, atheism, materialism and Darwinism. Bloodshed is inevitable so long as atheism and Darwinist propaganda persist. That is because these ideologies believe that conflict is essential to progress. They do not regard other people as human beings, as servants created by Allah. They regard killing, burning, destruction, launching rockets and suicide attacks as supposedly legitimate. There can be no end to violence and terror until Darwinism’s intellectual influence is eradicated. Let us all wage an intellectual struggle against these irreligious ideologies together.

Violence always breeds more violence. We must be forgiving and not throw the past in people’s faces. We must look to what we can do in the future. The Torah and the Qur’an command us to be forgiving and peaceful, not to act out of anger and not to hate. We must fully abide by these commands of Allah’s. We are living in an age when the King Messiah, or Hazrat Mahdi (peace be upon him), appears. All these pains will come to an end under the administration of that blessed individual. Muslims, Jews and Christians, we will all pray to Allah in that Temple of the Prophet Solomon (peace be upon him), set our tables together and talk and live together in happiness, by Allah’s leave. I believe, in the light of the verses of the Qur’an, the hadiths of our Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) and the reports in the Torah and the Injil, that what I have described will come about in the next 10 to 20 years. Until then, let us ally ourselves together and prepare with all our means to meet the King Messiah, Hazrat Mahdi (pbuh), in the best possible way, demolish the plans of the system of the antichrist and bring about the rule of love and friendship.